004: Viktor & God's Gym
Viktor's take on qualities of being Honduran: Solidarity. Assertiveness. Reinvention.
Viktor was 16 when he decided that he would someday own a gym in the Miraflores neighborhood of Tegucigalpa. It was the 90s and the desolate hills of Miraflores were where youth spent their late evenings partying and contemplating the horizon of the city and of their lives. In the years that followed, Viktor became a husband, father, psychologist, heavy metal musician, bodybuilding world champion, and - like he likes calling himself - “administrator”of the gym God gave him in Miraflores, called God's Gym.
His entrepreneurial path is a story of personal transformation where bullying, juvenile anger, consumption of alcohol and marihuana, depression, and bad financial decisions collide with self-study, mental, physical and spiritual development, search for support, strengthening of relationships, and nurturing of a solid community and family. Now, at 40, Viktor enjoys his sobriety and the audacity and clarity of his mind. A conversation with Viktor will have you delight in philosophy, psychology, theology, and history. It’s learning from someone who has lived much more than the sum of his age.
In narrating his entrepreneurship story, Viktor shares that at 18 he became a trainer at a known gym in Tegucigalpa. His income was so low and his love for bodybuilding so big that he reached an agreement with his manager: Viktor would organize the gym after hours in exchange for a waiver of the Lps 350 monthly fee he would have to pay to train there. A couple of years later he got into an argument with another trainer, for something Viktor now recognizes as his own indiscretion. He got fired and, while he felt humiliated at the moment, he remembers how valuable that moment was: “I did not want to be a trainer. I wanted to own a gym in Miraflores.”
To start his gym, Viktor got a loan from his father. Then, when that was not enough, he got another loan from a financial institution. His vision for the gym was so inflexible that he blinded himself from everyone’s warnings and accumulated huge debt. Viktor now looks back to that time with gratitude. Losing his job led him to reconnect with his dream. The dire financial situation taught him to be more flexible and to listen to the people around him. The [literal and figurative] hits he took taught him to live a more fulfilling life.
Viktor recognizes that his greatest achievement in being an entrepreneur has been to get to know people; to support them and be supported. This philosophy is integrated into God’s Gym, for, as he notes, the goal has never been to have the best machines or installations (although he pays attention to that). “[God’s Gym] is about the fact that people want to be part of something. It’s about paying attention to people regardless of how they look or who they are. It’s about treating people with respect.”
God’s Gym offers what Viktor learnt through his experience practicing bodybuilding: the transformation of the body is a mental exercise. “Some people believe that the goal is to have a muscular body that looks good in the mirror. Those things aren’t bad, but that is too superficial and fleeting of a goal. If that's the goal, people are likely to give up.” Bodybuilding is an educational tool that provides a structure to substitute the ideas that underpin habits, therefore not just changing the habit but rather transforming both the ideas and the habits.
He applies those same concepts of transformation through ideas to his vision of the most beautiful Honduras he can imagine: A society that is fully informed, educated, and which generates new ideas. A place where people succeed because they develop within their area of interests and capacity. Viktor is an agent of change and puts ideas to practice. For example, for the gym's 18th anniversary in August 2021, his wife, children and everyone close to the gym invited people to the Juana Laínez park in Tegucigalpa to exercise and take part in an entrepreneurship fair, an event they celebrated under the slogan “Rescuing Culture.” The goal was to promote the exchange of ideas and wellbeing and to celebrate what entrepreneurs around the city are creating. More than 300 people attended.
For people who are thinking about becoming entrepreneurs, Viktor reminds them that “birds of a feather flock together.” He suggests they find people who want similar things and that are in a position to provide good advice. He encourages them to leave judgement aside, to read as much as they can about the topic they want to embark on, to become organized, and to do everything legally. Viktor suggests paying attention to our consciousness; that voice that softly says “that was not okay” as it will eventually become silent if it is consistently ignored.
When asked about his own reading habits, Viktor says he has been a fan of bodybuilding magazines since he was very young. That’s where he learnt a lot of the things that led him to win national and international awards. That is also where he learnt about the type of husband he wanted to be for his wife, Fabiola (bodybuilders are usually shown with their wives by their side). Most people who know him remember him always being strong and muscular but he remembers a time when that was not the case. Bodybuilding, his business, his family and the activities he has created to rescue culture are all things he decided to do. He reminds us, “If you have observed that you have a strong desire to do something, you must. You must also be willing to pay the price. That’s what I did. I was willing to pay the price.” He also remembers that once, on a flight, the person sitting beside him turned to him pointing to a local magazine in his hand and asked “This is you, right?”
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Viktor was born and raised in Tegucigalpa. He attended Colegio San Francisco. At the moment this article was published, he had been married for 21 years to his wife, Fabiola. They have four children. In 2008 he became world champion of natural bodybuilding. He currently studies theology and counseling. He also studies German and wishes to earn a doctorate in theology.